


Dare Night

by night_is_where_the_romance_is



Category: Now You See Me (Movies)
Genre: Dare, Drabble and a Half, F/M, Fluff, Humor, Hypnotism, Pranking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-31
Updated: 2016-07-31
Packaged: 2018-07-28 10:16:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,309
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7636333
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/night_is_where_the_romance_is/pseuds/night_is_where_the_romance_is
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dare Night is an event in the house, to say the least.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Dare Night

Jack had only been successful twice with hypnotism.

Once was with Chase, Merritt’s asshat brother.

The other was with a girl at Shake Shack, and he was still fairly certain that she’d lied and done so due to what Lula called ‘being a Hottie McHotFace’ (her words, not his). 

So when Merritt jokingly dared him into trying to hypnotize Lula, his girlfriend of four months, Jack knew that it wouldn’t work. It had worked with Chase going off spit and a prayer. It was Dare Night, something Lula and Merritt had organized. The rules were simple: you would dare someone to do something, and it would go around and around as players forfeited the round, refusing or unable to complete the dare, or one of the other plethora of options, including when Merritt got so drunk he passed out, Danny got into an argument with someone, Dylan would leave the room, or Lula would smoke them all within the first hour.

The days Merritt got drunk made for the best stories to hold over everyone’s heads, argument nights led to them all avoiding the arguing pair, the nights Dylan left meant no one had won, and the nights Lula won meant there would be at least three pranks Jack would be waking up to. He wasn’t the best at Dare Night (Merritt definitely spent some time outside thinking up potential dares) but he was better than Danny, who took every dare as a personal vendetta against him.

“Come on Jackie-boy, hypnotize Miss May or forfeit the round,” Merritt said, drinking a glass of whiskey. Danny shook his head, holding a bottle of beer and Dylan rolled his eyes. They didn’t really understand why Dylan took part in Dare Night if he forfeited the first dare he got settled with, but the more the merrier was Merritt’s motto when it came to Dare Night.

“ _Why_ do I have to hypnotize my girlfriend?” Jack asked, sitting on the couch with Lula. Merritt was sitting on the ground in front of them, cross-legged. Danny and Dylan had chairs that formed a circle, as Li watched from his stool in the corner. He’d decided after the first three arguments the first Dare Night (in the first round - and yes, Danny and Merritt started all of them) that he would act as the moderator. 

“Because it’ll be _hilarious_ , and if you actually manage it, it’ll be interesting.”

“Ok,” Jack sighed, turning to Lula, who was resting her chin in her hand, watching with an amused smile. “Can I see your hands?” She smiled wider, placing her hands in his, with the sly expression that was slightly scary, the kind that made him want to pat his pockets and know the exact location of his wallet and keys. 

“Now, relax,” Jack said softly, maintaining eye contact before moving his hand quickly, pressing his thumb onto the pulse point on her wrist and moving his hand in front of her eyes. “Focus on the palm of my hand and as your eyes glaze over you will begin to feel relaxed and tranquil,” he said, speaking swiftly in a low voice. “Listen to my words as they flow freely in a fashion floating over you, falling and feeling and  _sleep_.” Lula’s eyes fluttered shut, her head falling onto Jack’s shoulder. 

“You will wake up when I snap my fingers. When you wake up, you’ll pour tequila and do exactly what I’ll tell you.” Jack leaned forwards and whispered quick words to her, the movements of his mouth covered by her hair. He snapped his fingers and Lula righted herself instantly, flicking glance back and forth between the men who were waiting. She shrugged and picked up the tequila bottle, pouring herself a shot.

“Nice try Jackie-boy, but that’s not hypnotism. Everyone’s been drinking tequila tonight, so I guess that _means_ you’ve lo-“ Merritt snapped his mouth shut when Lula downed her glass and turned to him.

“Sorry guys, but I’ve got a few little confessions to give up. Dylan,” she said, turning her head to look at him. “You’ve been drinking half decaf the past week. Danny, we short-sheeted your bed, yes just because. Li, that stool’s gonna break if you keep leaning backwards on it. Jack, your hair’s been messed up for the past three hours, courtesy of Dylan. Merritt,” Lula turned again, the words flying out of her mouth as if she was under a trance. “You’ve been making dares and writing them down since the second time we did Dare Night. Kinda against the rules.” Lula’s demeanor changed suddenly, going from stiff spine and sharp biting off of words, as if she couldn’t get them out fast enough, to the normal sly cat-like posture she held. Her voice, low and quick, snapped back into her traditional high notes of emotion that slid off every word, the tap-tap-tap of her foot against the leg of the coffee table.

“Saying something Mer?” Jack said, pulling his words like putty in his triumph. Even Dylan looked stunned.

“What - what _happened_?”

“I do believe we call this ‘completing a dare’,” Li replied, his face the picture of calm as Merritt’s features knit themselves into an expression that practically defined the word ‘nonplussed’. “Danny, you’re up.”

 __

 

Jack went up the stairs with Lula, flicking cards into the air like he was making picots that lasted only split seconds. “We really got Mer tonight,” he smirked, dipping his head to give her a kiss.

“Oh, absolutely,” she smiled back, snapping a wrist out to snatch a card out of the air, which had been fluttering to a slow descent death moments before. “Think he noticed?”

“That we saw his notebook two days ago and saw he’d planned to ask it?”

“Probably,” Lula shrugged, weaving her way down the hallway. “He’s most likely already figured out that we staged that hypnotism.”

“Still worth it,” Jack replied, his low voice he kept masked like his expression, so at odds with the easy emotions that coated every word and cock of an eyebrow from Lula. 

“You’re doing it again,” she murmured, keeping her voice muted to match the darkness and silence that enveloped the hallways at night. “That mask - you’ve never told me how you’ve perfected it.”

“Not perfected,” Jack said, trying to dissuade her from the sensitive topic. He didn't like to talk about why he'd had to create a mask of nothingness to pull over his face when needed.“You still see through it like it’s glass.”

“That’s because everyone still looks at you like you’ve come back from the dead, staying in the shadows. The mask you keep on _are_ the shadows and death. To see through it, you just have to accept that you’ve never died, not that you’ve come back. The emotions and things you feel drip off of you like - like lazy lines of ink, seeping through wet paper. Spreading.”

“Damn,” he murmured, watching Lula’s fingers cut through the air as her explanation resonated through his body. “You’ve never said that before.”

“You’ve never asked,” she shrugged, opening the door.

“You should write poetry. Really.”

“Don’t say that,” Lula said, waving her hand as if she could evaporate the words like smoke. “It wouldn’t be any good.”

“How do you know?” Jack challenged, catching her hand and bringing it to her lips. “You’ve said more beautiful things than most people have ever heard. Writing down a little more, that’s just as much magic as stealing my wallet.”

“Speaking of,” she smirked, sliding her hand from behind her back to reveal the battered leather. “You really _should_ hold onto this better.”

“That’s just not fair.”

“You should make this into a poem,” Lula smiled, pressing a kiss to the corner of Jack’s mouth. “Dare Night was fun.”

“Merritt’s gonna get us back.”

“That’s the fun of it.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hi, and thank you so much for reading!! I hope you enjoyed it, this was so fun to write. I really wanted to explore hypnotism outside of Merritt doing some, and this was what became of it! If you have any comments, suggestions, reviews, or requests, please let me know down in the comments section below! Thank you!!
> 
> -Night


End file.
